Promoting contraceptives to adolescents in Mexico? Make the campaigns fun

Monserrat, Ariantne and Isis and their children visit a
RED DKT clinic in the Iztapalapa borough of Mexico
City to find a contraceptive to space the birth of their
next child. Photo: David J. Olson

This was originally published on Global Health TV on March 21, 2017.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — I met the three young women at a reproductive health clinic in Iztapalapa, the most populous and fastest-growing borough of Mexico City, with a population of 1.8 million on the eastern side of the capital city.

Ariatne and Isis, both 20 years old, each have one child. Monserrat was their aunt, but didn’t look much older. She had three children. All of them were looking for a way to space the birth of their next child. One of them wanted to wait five years; another, ten years.

All of them had chosen intrauterine devices (IUDs) as their contraceptive, one of them told me, “because they are comfortable and secure.”

Although unplanned pregnancy is a big problem in Mexico (and the rest of Latin America), good sexual and reproductive healthcare is hard to come by in Mexico, especially for adolescents, according to a recent study.

Almost three-quarters of pregnancies among adolescents aged 15-19 in the region are unplanned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, and about half of those end in abortion. Among all women 15-19 who need contraceptives, 36% of them are not using a modern method. The unmet need is highest in Central America, where 46% of sexually active adolescents who want to avoid pregnancy are not using modern contraceptives.

DKT México, a non-governmental organization that uses social marketing to prevent HIV and promote contraception in Latin America and the Caribbean, has learned some lessons about how to promote contraception to young people after success in promoting condom use but failing to do the same with contraceptives after they took a more traditional approach.

Amid a flurry of high-tech approaches, some find merit in low-tech techniques

DKT street theater provides family planning information in Bihar.

This was originally published on Humanosphere blog on March 7, 2016.

Because of the meteoric rise of the internet and cell phones in many developing countries, many global health programs have been rushing to embrace these technologies as efficient ways of reaching large numbers of people with information on such issues as family planning, HIV prevention and maternal and child health.

This is happening in countries like India, Tanzania, South Africa, and Ethiopia, where technologies like the internet, mobile phones, social media and geographic positioning systems are bringing health delivery into the 21^st century.

But some programs are eschewing high tech and sticking with low tech as the best way to bring vital health information to their low-income consumers, at least for now.

Taking HIV prevention to the streets, and cyberspace, in Brazil

A DKT promoter hands out a condom sample on the streets of São Paulo.

This piece was originally published on the Huffington Post on Jan. 25, 2013.

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — On Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, "Prudence Trooper" repeatedly battled it out with HIV on the streets of downtown São Paulo. HIV was trying to infect pedestrians but Prudence Trooper defended them, because he had Prudence, one of the leading condom brands in Brazil, in his arsenal.

The two characters were mascots created by DKT Brazil, a social marketing enterprise that distributes Prudence condoms for HIV prevention and family planning, and are an example of the creative, in-your-face methods it uses to encourage young Brazilians to protect themselves against HIV, which currently affects more than 600,000 Brazilians.

My top 10 communications stories in global health and poverty in 2012

Melinda Gates, Andrew Mitchell and three African heads of state welcome British Prime Minister David Cameron to the podium of the London Family Planning Summit.

This piece was originally published on the Impatient Optimists blog on Dec. 21, 2012.
 
In 2012, global development communication trends continued as in recent years: Non-profits increased their reliance on social media, decreased it on traditional media and looked for creative ways to call attention to their issues, change policy and raise money. Several global events provided unique opportunities to cast a spotlight on food security, family planning, and AIDS.

As a global development communicator, I track trends in development communication. For the last two years I have shared my personal, subjective take on what I consider the top global development communication stories of the year. Here’s my take on 2012, in no particular order:

In management of G8 and G20 summits, Mexican performance was vastly superior to U.S.

NGOs meeting at Los Cabos to prepare for their first press conference.

NOTE: This was originally published on the Huffington Post on July 2, 2012.
 
This year's G8 Summit took place at the secluded Camp David presidential retreat in the mountains of northern Maryland. The G20 Summit took place in Los Cabos, Mexico, the beach resort area at the southern tip of Baja California, where American tourists partied in clubs and frolicked on the beaches while 26 heads of state grappled with the world's most pressing problems.

Apart from the striking difference in venues, there was another huge contrast in the American and Mexican summits -- the level of transparency and the manner in which the two governments managed the process of consulting outside groups, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), otherwise known as civil society. Guess which country had a very transparent and inclusive process, with multiple opportunities for civil society engagement, and which made used a dedicated website and a suite of social media tools, including Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and others, to share information.

If you guessed the United States, you'd be wrong. As a member of the G8/G20 Global Task Force, a group of international NGOs advocating for their issues in the two summits, I saw firsthand that the Obama Administration's management of the G8 process was none of that:

WHO finds social media indispensable in managing global health crises

Inside SHOC, the "situation room" of the World Health Organization.

NOTE: This article was first published on the Huffington Post on May 21, 2012.

GENEVA, Switzerland -- This month I was visiting the Strategic Health Operations Centre (SHOC), deep inside the World Health Organization. SHOC is WHO's equivalent of the White House Situation Room, where a multi-disciplinary team of experts gather to access and share information that enable rapid situation assessment and decision-making during global pandemics and other health crises.

Along with an impressive array of state-of-the-art communications, collaboration and coordination tools were four large screens for monitoring crises. I was fascinated to see that one of them displayed TweetDeck, the application that facilitates Twitter searches by selected key words or phrases.

WHO uses social media to manage global health crises, I asked Christine Feig, WHO's head of communications? Yes, they are, and she recounted a tale of how social media have fundamentally changed WHO health surveillance in the age of Twitter and Facebook. WHO's seminal social media event occurred the last time the SHOC was staffed 24/7 -- the Japanese tsunami and Fukushima radiation crisis of 2011. Here's how it played out:

On March 14, three days after the tsunami hit Japan, WHO observed via social media that some people were drinking wound cleaner, which contains iodine, because it was thought to protect them from radiation. Via Twitter and Facebook, the WHO social media team warned people not to drink it -- that it would not help and could be harmful.

Top Ten Global Development Communications Stories of 2011

The first ladies of Kenya and South Africa tweeting for the first time at the Social Good Summit in New York.

This was originally posted to the Impatient Optimists, the blog of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on Dec. 21, 2011.

 

As was the case in 2010, global development non-profits continued their love affair with social media, finding Twitter, Facebook and the like amazing tools for communicating and advocating on a wide range of global issues. From global health to climate change to political systems, we’ve seen health improved, lives saved, policies changed, and governments overturned when we harness these new information pathways effectively.

Based on the 11,196 non-profit professionals surveyed in the 3^rd Annual Non-Profit Social Network Benchmark Report,  the Facebook average member community size increased 161 percent in 2011, and the average Twitter base was up 2 percent. International groups reported the highest use of Facebook up by a whopping 97 percent, and nearly double the number of Twitter followers as compared to all non-profits. As a global health and development communicator, I’ve been tracking the incredible progression of how health and development organizations use both new and traditional media to connect, engage, and inspire.

It’s why I’ve created my very own Top 10 list of favorite global development communication picks of 2011. Now, on to my other subjective picks for 2011 (and, yes, the Gates Foundation is on the list!) in no particular order:

Crisis in Horn of Africa is not over; how can we prevent another one in future?

This article was originally published in The Huffington Post on Oct. 4, 2011.
 
The last time the Horn of Africa was hit by a famine as severe as the current one, it was 1985 and I was just finishing two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. My wife and I, moved by the horrific images coming out of Ethiopia, volunteered to work at a feeding camp with World Vision. But the U.S. relief organization was besieged with similar offers, and politely turned us down. Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones convinced a plethora of pop stars to record "We Are the World." That humanitarian disaster somehow became firmly entrenched in the hearts and minds of people around the world.

The current drought and famine is worse than the one in 1985 -- some say it is the worst in 60 years and affects more than 12 million people, most of them women and children -- but seems to be attracting a fraction of the world's attention, despite the proliferation of social media and social networks.

By some estimates, 300,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and are likely to die at a very high rate and very quickly, according to Executive Director Lisa Meadowcroft of AMREF USA, the U.S. affiliate of the African Medical and Relief Foundation (AMREF) based in Nairobi, who just came back from a trip to the Horn of Africa.

Social Good Summit aims to put social media to work for development during UN Week

African first ladies tweeting for the first time is only one of many wonders of technology and global development to be highlighted at the upcoming Social Good Summit and its Digital Media Lounge to be held during the U.N. General Assembly next week in New York.

The United Nations Foundation and its high tech partners behind the Summit gave us a sneak peek of coming attractions during a tele-briefing yesterday.

There will be a head of state at the Social Good Summit — President Kikwete will accept an award for his commitment to furthering technology and new media in Tanzania — and the first ladies of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa will also be on hand to tackle Twitter. In an event entitled “First Ladies, First Tweets,” they will publicly demonstrate their first efforts to harness social media to advance their issues.

YouTube + Wikipedia = Social Change

WASHINGTON, DC -- What do you get if you combine the video-sharing power of YouTube, the depth of information of Wikipedia and the social change aspirations of an advocacy website? Something called ViewChange.org, as I found out last week when I attended its formal launch at AED headquarters here.

U.S. independent television broadcaster, Link TV, launched “the next generation multimedia platform for global development” that combines powerful video stories with the latest “semantic” technology that allows a person, after viewing one of the many powerful short videos showing "good news" development stories, to extract more information about that issue, and then to take action in a variety of ways. ViewChange.org is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

After watching a video, you have three options: “Watch More” (as in, watch more videos), “In the News” (to explore an issue in more depth) and “Take Action” (which presents you with a variety of concrete actions ranging from taking political action, donating to a cause or writing a letter to the editor). Every video is tied specific actions that the viewer can take.

ViewChange.org goes way beyond YouTube, where the end point is the merely emotion elicited by the video. With ViewChange.org, the idea is that after the viewer is moved emotionally, the viewer will be moved practically to action.

High tech TEDx event shows that child health is within reach

NEW YORK, NY — On the opening day of the United National Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Monday, I participated in a most unusual media and educational event organized by TEDxChange, a collaboration between TEDx and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The live event from the Paley Center for Media on 52nd Street featured Melinda Gates, Hans Rosling, Mechai Viravaidya and Graça Machel in front of a live audience of, as TEDx host Chris Anderson put it, luminaries and changemakers (Ted Turner was in the audience along with NGO and foundation leaders). A live webcast of the event was viewed my millions around the world, and from 82 TEDx events, several of which we saw on camera in live shots, and and is now available to view online.

I viewed the event from “Bloggers’ Alley,” several floors above the event, with about 20 other bloggers and new media journalists, most of whom had laptops and smart phones to extend the salient facts of the event even further into the world. We viewed the event on two screens at either end of the room. And we had a third screen, which displayed a constant stream of all tweets including the #TEDxChange hashtag. The deluge of the Twitterstream produced a continuous stream of concise Tweets that came about one per second for the entire 90 minutes of the event and even after it ended.

It was a fabulous display of what is possible with communications technology in the 21st century. But the content revealed at the event several floors below was even more compelling.

The speakers were all terrific – Melinda Gates and Graça Machel displayed their passion and commitment to improving the world and Hans Rosling and Mechai Viravaidya (Mr. Condom of Thailand) regaled us with their knowledge, energy and sense of humor.

I particularly enjoyed Dr. Rosling, a professor of international health and co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation, who dazzled us with his computer graphics, which convert international statistics into moving interactive graphics showing us the history of child mortality.

In one part of his presentation, Dr. Rosling showed us the fall in child mortality in Sweden (starting with 400 child deaths per 1,000 born in 1800), Egypt (with 300 deaths in 1960) and Thailand (with 150 deaths in 1960), and ending with all three countries ending with roughly the same low level of child mortality.

Later, he presented a graph of the relationship between child mortality and family size in 1960, with “developing countries” clumped together in the upper right (high mortality and high family size) and the “Western” countries in the lower left (low mortality and low family size). Then, in an amazing and awe-inspiring display of computer graphics, he made the graph come alive and move through time to 2000. Many of those developing countries in the upper right moved rapidly into the lower left quadrant, with Dr. Rosling urging them on: “Come over to our side,” he exclaimed. “Welcome to a decent life.”

The conclusion of his presentation, which made clear the association between child mortality and falling family size: “The MDG on child mortality is fully possible.”

It was an inspiring way to begin the MDG Summit.

NOTE: Some of Dr. Rosling’s amazing graphics are available are available at Gapminder World and on this website.